Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I want to pay my respects again to our late colleague in Clúid, a great housing advocate. It used to be that commodities were mobile but property has also become mobile in recent years. That has changed the dynamic very considerably. Deputy Joan Collins referred to the extensive amount of property that is now held by various entities and is mobile. Really when people think about housing, the vast majority do not think about property but about buying a house to make a home in. That has increasingly become impossible for a very large cohort in society. A whole generation is locked out of choices that were available to people even a couple of decades ago. There have been falling numbers in terms of home ownership while the options that are available to people are not permanent. It used to be that renting a house was a temporary thing because it did not provide security of tenure or certainty in respect of rent.

The problem is that has become the only permanent option available to many people. Indeed, it is heavily supported by State intervention by way of the housing assistance payment, which is a very expensive way of providing housing to people who really should have the benefit of a permanent house through directly built housing.

We have to change the terminology and stop using terms like "property ladder". The vast majority of people do not want to get on to a property ladder. They just want a home. I hear young people saying, "I want nothing more than you wanted", whether that is a home that is provided directly by the State or one that people provide for themselves by taking out a mortgage. It is a question of reframing our thinking on this. Obviously this Bill is in response to some of the institutional investors that are very much in evidence at the moment. It used to be that Part V required in the region of 20% of a housing development to be set aside, and within that was an affordable component and a social housing component. That was amended by way of legislation in recent years, if not by this Government then certainly the previous one. Essentially, that removed the affordable part of this and focused on the social element. Part V was far from perfect and any of us who were on local authorities would know that deals were done whereby houses were not directly provided and money changed hands instead to buy houses in other locations. I have often wondered if a proper balance sheet was kept on the delivery of the number of houses that Part V promised.

While I certainly have some problems with aspects of this Bill, I see nothing wrong with allowing it to go through to Committee Stage to have it teased out and amended in a way that improves the situation. There are certainly issues that need to be flagged in terms of how the number of houses that come into the system by way of council or social housing will not be diminished. There is a cohort of people, and I agree with Deputy O'Sullivan on certain income cohorts that are caught in the middle, who do not receive any public support, who are not in a position to buy, and yet renting is costing way more than a mortgage would cost them. We have to look at that cohort. Part of the reason people bought in the past was that they wanted to put down roots, have a place to rear their children, and have certainty about where their children went to school. Buying a house gave them that certainty. For a large cohort of people now, they do not even have the certainty of being sure from year to year whether they are going to get an eviction notice, or where they are going to find alternative accommodation. Indeed, sometimes I am seeing people in my office with good jobs saying that homelessness does not happen to people like them. These are people who would have been, even 20 years ago, in a position to purchase a home for themselves.

We have to rethink our approach towards public lands. I have serious problems with the Land Development Agency because it is not going to deliver affordability. Affordability will be delivered if public lands are used and project managed for the delivery of houses that are affordable for sale and to rent, in addition to council houses or houses run by approved housing bodies. If those very valuable sites are handed over to the private sector, what inevitably happens is that we end up with something that is not affordable. We are seeing this at O'Devaney Gardens, and I am not one bit happy about what is happening there. We have to look at the income of the average person to decide what is affordable.

We can do way better than this. The housing crisis is impacting on the quality of people's lives. People are leaving the city, for example, not because they cannot get good jobs but because they cannot afford to live. Housing is the greatest driver of the cost of living for many people. We have to put this centre stage if we are going to deal with the cost of living and quality of life, and deliver a degree of certainty for people who are crying out for it.

There are problems with this legislation as I see it, but we will certainly not be opposing it going to Committee Stage where it can be amended. I am certain that there will not be a monopoly on wisdom when it comes to the proposers of the legislation taking amendments.

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